Dark Matter
by Herbert Q. Sanchez
Summary: Completely original cast. A young Craftknight travels the world with his Guardian Beast in search of a mysterious weapon material. Takes itself a lot less seriously than this summary would imply.
1. Chapter 1

Swordcraft Fanfic of Joy!

Summary: Completely original cast. A young Craftknight travels the world with his Guardian Beast in search of a mysterious weapon material. Contains violence and probably some language, but shouldn't be too traumatizing.

**Author's Notes of Utter Joy!**

This story may be updated sporadically, because I have no idea where I'm going with it. I will try to make it semi-cohesive, but if you see a glaring error or plothole, please let me know so I can create a needlessly convoluted way of explaining it and then go "HAHA I HAD THIS PLANNED THE WHOLE TIME ARENT I SO GREAT AT PLOT?".

I'm looking at you, David Anez.

I own Varrant, Lorelei, and any other characters I create in the future. The good folks at Flight Plan own everything else. While I doubt it is at all necessary for this to be here, everybody else puts disclaimers in, and I'm a conformist, so I will too.

This site seems to enjoy ignoring my line breaks, so when I have to change scenes in mid-chapter, I will just put a large, easily-noticeable "BREAK". Aren't you glad I told you this now, thus sparing you the 0.3 seconds it would have taken you to figure it out yourself?

Chapter to commence in 3, 2...

_Chapter One - Escape_

"Master, are you sure this is the way we came?"

The girl was speaking very loudly so as to be heard over the screeching alarms. She and her master darted along the metal corridors, each frantically searching for some way out of this mechanical labyrinth.

The girl was thin and had waist-lenth silvery hair that was streaming out behind her in her hurry to keep up with her master. She wore some old, tarnished metal armor that looked as though it had survived through thousands of battles, although it was not a complete suit - merely boots, gauntlets, a chestplate, and some protection for her shoulders. The rest of her costume was a tight red bodysuit with two holes cut in the back for her most distinguishing feature: a pair of small, angelic wings. She was not running like her master, instead using the wings to fly alongside of him.

Try as she might, the girl couldn't quite keep up with the boy she was following. His dark red overcoat, much like the girl's armor, looked to have gone through years and years of pure, undiluted neglect. The boy was heavily adorned in old jewelry that was maybe once very elegant, but then got buried in dirt for centuries. He had spiky, light brown hair and a bandana covered in strange tribal markings was tied around his forehead. Across his back was slung a long metal case with the hilt of a sword poking out from it. Both the boy and the girl appeared to be in their mid-teens.

"Truthfully? No," said the boy. "But we're getting away from the treasure room. Isn't that good enough?"

"No!" the girl replied. "Varrant, what if we run into a dead end, or guards, or--"

Varrant stopped in his tracks. "You had to say it, didn't you?"

Directly in front of them were two large machines that resembled four-legged robotic spiders. They were, for a reason known only to their creator, painted bright, festive shades of cobalt blue.

"Interceptors," said Varrant, placing one foot behind the other. "Lorelei, stay where you are. I'm not gonna need you for this."

"Way to make me feel wanted," the grumbled the angel-winged girl, crossing her arms and giving him a hurt look.

Varrant reached to the weapon on his back and pulled it out of its sheath, flicking a small switch on the gold-colored hilt. A very loud noise filled the hallway and drowned out the alarms: the roar of a chainsaw.

He had produced a wide-bladed sword that would otherwise be blunt and very nonthreatening if not for the fact that its edge was covered in fully-functional chainsaw teeth. He stepped forwards and slashed, easily splitting one of the robots in half.

The second one raised a small gatling gun located on its underside, but was too slow; Varrant quickly sliced off the entire top half of the machine. Ruined, it slumped uselessly to the floor.

With that accomplished, Varrant hopped over the wreckage. "Come on."

The girl followed after him and they continued their flight down the corridors - the term "flight" being either proverbial or literal, depending on who you looked at.

They would quickly discover that the Interceptor duo was just the beginning. Pouring down the hallways now were a wide variety of mechanical creatures. Small robotic tanks, crablike machines with glowing green eyes in the centers of their bodies, and more Interceptors, all charged at them like a swarm of hungry insects. They were all over the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling, with no thoughts other than a simple compulsion to make the intruder Craftknight dead.

Varrant's buzzsaw sword worked quickly, and sliced each machine as it came to him. The boy charged his way through the metal mob, leaving nothing but pieces of scrap behind. He might have stopped to pick up some of the fragments if he was not in such a hurry.

After hacking his way through one final Interceptor, Varrant and Lorelei came to the end of the corridor, meeting face to face with a big metal door. Oddly, unlike most of the other doors in this place, it did not open at his presence.

"I think you need a key to get past here, Master Varrant," said Lorelei, hovering next to him.

Varrant nodded, slashed his sword against the metal door four times, and then kicked it in its center. The door fell to pieces. "This way is faster," he replied, stepping through.

Lorelei followed her master into the next area, which was a rectangular room about the size of a small house. She first noticed that the walls were covered in burns, bullet holes, and long slash marks. Then she noticed something else; something that was quite a bit more threatening.

"Uh, Master Varrant?" she asked, pointing at something very large on the opposite side of the room. "I'm pretty sure this isn't the way we came. For one thing, we definitely never saw that when we came in."

Varrant, impressed at the sight, whistled and switched his buzzsaw sword on again. "_Big_ sucker," he said.

On the other side of the room was a tremendous, vaguely humanoid, robot that was painted in a now-fading shade of yellow. Its body was distinctly rounded on its torso, legs, and hands. The robot was so large that it could barely even fit in the room. Two green eyes locked on to Varrant, and the machine produced several cannons that were built into its hands. Slowly, vivid purple bolts of electricity began to encircle the cannon barrels.

"Grappler," said the Craftknight. "Lorelei, hit the deck!"

The Grappler fired.

Varrant dodged to the left and Lorelei dodged to the right. The robot's pulse of electricity flew past them and struck the wall. It left a smoking, black burn on the metal. Varrant charged in on the Grappler and attempted to strike it in the leg, but was knocked away by the robot's large, flat hand.

The boy landed on his back, and his sword's point stuck into the metal floor. Not one to be deterred after one strike, Varrant jumped to his feet, grabbed the sword, and charged, only to discover that something was holding him back.

His sword had gotten stuck.

"Ugh, I _hate it_ when this happens!" he complained, trying to no avail to get it out of the floor. "Lorelei! Give me some backup over here!"

Lorelei glided over and hovered in front of him protectively, sticking her arms out forward, palms towards the Grappler. While struggling to pull his sword out of the floor, Varrant briefly noticed the air heating up around him. It was quite a dramatic difference; it had been extremely cold in here a minute ago.

"Burst Flare!" shouted Lorelei, and then her entire body ignited in flames. Varrant moved quickly away from her, for the flames were coming dangerously close to singing his coat.

The massive fireball that was once Lorelei charged headlong into the Grappler. It caught the robot in the stomach hard enough to briefly propel it about a foot into the air. When the robot landed, it landed hard, with enough force to shake the ground. Conveniently, the vibrations allowed Varrant to free his sword from the floor.

Immediately after retrieving it, he charged across the room at the Grappler and succeeded in striking it twice across the chest before it knocked him to the ground again. He got up (briefly thanking the gods of fate that his weapon didn't get stuck again) and jumped away from his enemy.

"You okay?" a now non-combusted Lorelei flew down next to him. "Want me to heal you?"

Varrant shook his head. "No, I'm fine. One more hit to its body, and that should be it."

He took off into another full-blown charge at the Grappler. It stuck out its hand to swat him away again, but Varrant was quicker. He sidestepped and slashed at the hand, severing it from the robot's body. Jumping into the air, he kicked off the enemy's chest and slashed downwards into it in mid-jump. Varrant landed on one knee and looked up, waiting patiently.

At first, nothing changed. Then the Grappler broke in half, right down the center. Its halves exploded in flame, a blast so powerful it blew out the wall that it had been standing in front of. Beyond what had once been a metal barrier was a long, weaving pathway through a deep, dark forest.

Varrant switched his sword off and examined it. He scoffed. "Whoops. I busted the chain. I'll have to get it fixed somewhere." Then he turned to Lorelei and pointed to the forest path. "See? We can go out this way. I told you we weren't lost."

He hopped over the Grappler's smoking remains and went on down the forest path. Lorelei paused to give him a funny look, and then followed after him.

The Craftknight walked along the path and his Guardian Beast floated after him, the two leaving the abandoned machine factory behind. They went on for a few minutes before the girl spoke up. "All that," she sighed, "just for some little black crystal."

Varrant reached into one of the pockets of his beaten-up red overcoat, and produced a glimmering piece of black stone about the size of his fist. "One piece down," he said in an upbeat voice. "Now, wasn't there a town around here somewhere?"


	2. Chapter 2

Hot damn! It went through!

Sorry, all, I meant to update last week or so but this here site wouldn't allow me to submit documents. I'd wish you a happy belated Thanksgiving now, but that just isn't my style. Instead I'll wish bubonic plague upon you! Fun!

Next chapter may also come late, due to unavoidable events in my life. No, Yggdra Union, I will not play you. You cannot tempt me with your fun gameplay and entertaining story, vile digital succubus. My will is as iron.

Anyway, I'll shut up. Chapter now.

_Chapter Two - The Incident at the Inn_

"This is _your_ fault, Varrant," said Lorelei. "I blame nobody for this but you."

The two travellers were waiting outside the door of the inn manager's office, having been involved in a bit of a misadventure after they left the factory.

As it turned out, Varrant had been misinformed. There was not a town around here, anywhere. Or if there was a town, they had been completely unable to find it. They had gotten lost in the twisting forest that surrounded the old factory, and the sun had just about gone down when Lorelei spotted the only trace of civilization they had seen in the past few hours: An inn.

Hungry and tired as any fellow would be after a day of fighting robots with a giant chainsaw/sword hybrid, Varrant suggested to Lorelei that they stay at the inn for the night and merely fix the broken weapon tomorrow. Lorelei agreed, because she was every bit as hungry and tired. Having reached a unanimous decision, they entered the inn and went to go have dinner.

They ordered half the menu, which in retrospect was an awful idea. But when you were as hungry as Varrant was, you were far more concerned with obliterating the hunger than actually stopping to think about whether or not you could afford it. But it would soon be brought to light that even if Varrant had been carrying the money around, he would have lost it back at the fight with the Grappler.

To put it in the most blunt terms possible, Varrant had, unfortunately, lost his wallet immediately after finishing what was likely a hundred-thousand boam meal. He assumed that it had fallen out of his coat when the Grappler had smacked him. And so here they were, this Craftknight and his Guardian Beast, outside the manager's office and awaiting whatever horrible, unspeakable fate was to be thrust upon them.

"How is it my fault? You were the one who ordered all that stuff," said Varrant.

"Don't you shift the blame to me! I didn't hear you protesting at the time!" Lorelei said, turning away from him and folding her arms. "Man, of all the Craftknights I could have been bonded to, why'd it have to be you? Why not a crime-fighting vigilante, or a hired killer, or a smuggler? Something cool?"

"Yeah, well you're not that great of a Guardian Beast! I could have gotten a sarcastic robot, or maybe a fairy girl who worships me. But no, I get a valkyrie. There's nothing interesting about _you_. Your armor doesn't even look that cool!"

"I'll get some cooler armor when you wash that trenchcoat! What are you, a hobo?"

The waitress from the restaurant poked her head out of the door to the office. "Um, excuse me?"

"_What_?" Varrant and Lorelei snapped in unison.

"The manager will see you now," said the waitress, opening the door wide. The two stepped into the room, staring daggers at each other.

As Varrant entered, he saw the manager and immediately felt sick to his stomach at the sight. The manager was short, monstrously fat, bald, his clothes were filthy, and his head was stretched into a bizarre, oblong shape. He most closely resembled some kind of assimilation of man, frog, and rubber. His face looked like it had recently been violently slammed into a wall. Repeatedly. He was, simply, the most hideous thing Varrant had ever seen.

At this fellow's gesture, Varrant took a seat. Lorelei remained hovering in the air as was typical of her - she was morally disgusted with the very notion to stop flying. Both hung their heads and did their very best not to look at the manager, for fear of throwing up.

"Tryna dine n'dash, were ya," said the manager, whose voice was rather reminiscent of a frog being strangled. "Can't pay, ya worgitoff. Dat's how we run things here."

Varrant groaned, already dreading the prospect of washing dishes for a month. Lorelei seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"Usually I make deadbeats like you wash da dishes," continued the manager, who was spraying saliva in rapid-fire. "But I godda question. You some kinda Craftknight?"

Varrant let out a long, shuddering breath. This man was just so ugly, that he did not even deserve to be referred to as a man. Varrant decided to name him The Abomination. "Yeah," he said, looking at his weapons case.

"Well den, I godda bedder task for ya. Wouldn't wanna impede on yer career," grunted The Abomination, his face splitting into a horrifying grin. "See, I need someone who knows howta fight for a job like dis."

"What is it?" Varrant asked desperately, wanting to get as far away from this twisted mockery of the very term "beautiful" as soon as he could.

"I godda daughter in trainin' ta be a Summoner," the manager said. "She's godda go to an academy up in da north, but I ain't got nobody who can take 'er. If you were to do it, I might be inclined ta drop yer bills."

The Crafknight caught his Guardian Beast muttering something like "This thing has a daughter?" He was now positively drenched in saliva and was tempted to tell The Abomination to say it, not spray it. Varrant eventually decided against this, partly because he might get stuck with kitchen duty for his quip and partly because he didn't want to use such an outdated phrase.

Lorelei drifted over and spoke to him in a low voice. "Varrant, I don't want to have to work for this freak. Make up some lame excuse, you're good at that."

An idea immediately slipped into his head. Surprised at his own quick thinking, Varrant held up his weapons case. "Can't do it, dude," he said. "I busted my only weapon on the way here, and a Craftknight without weapons is like, uh... I dunno, something useless." He immediately felt nauseous, because he accidentally looked at the manager head-on.

"Dun worry, we gotta forge here for travellin' Craftknights. 'Less you wanna wash dishes for 'bout three months."

Varrant winced. No matter which choice he picked, he was pretty much screwed either way. He was not quite sure who to blame for this predicament - Lorelei for ordering all the food; himself for dropping his wallet; or the Grappler that had caused him to lose it in the first place. He decided it was a combination of all three, but mostly Lorelei and the Grappler.

"I think we're stuck with the escort job," he said to Lorelei. The valkyrie let out a groan and fell backwards hopelessly, catching herself again just inches above the floor.

Thus, Varrant and Lorelei were forced into escorting the enigmatic Daughter of the Abomination to the Summoner academy. The trek north was to commence the following day, and so Varrant used the night to fix up his sword's teeth.

The Craftknight hammered some new chainsaw teeth in to replace the old, broken ones, and took care to sharpen all the remaining teeth while he was at it. His buzzsaw sword was the only real weapon he carried around with him, and so he was taking extra care to put it in top form.

Finally, he wrapped the chain around the edge of the blade and fastened it together. He flicked the sword's on switch, and took the blade to a thick wooden log for a few minutes. Finding no problems in the construction, he shut his weapon off again.

Varrant put the sword back in its case and wiped his face off with his bandana. He walked over to a small bed in the corner of the room (the actual hotel rooms were for the paying customers, so sayeth The Abomination) and slumped backwards onto it. Reaching into his coat pocket, he produced the small black crystal and stared into its shiny depths.

"Well, this sucks," he said. "I finally get a piece of dark matter and I have to do this escort job."

"Cheer up, Master," said Lorelei. "We're going to an academy, right? That means they'll have a big library, and the library might be able to tell us more about this stuff. We don't know very much about it, you know."

Varrant smiled at her. "I never figured you would see the bright side of it, Lorelei, thanks."

The valkyrie smiled back. "Don't mention it. Come on, now that you're done here, let's go for a walk."

"A walk? This late? It's almost midnight."

"Come on, Varrant. It's stuffy in here, I need to get some air before I go to sleep."

Varrant started to say something in reply, but before he could get a word in edgewise, Lorelei had gripped him around the wrist and pulled him up off the bed. She tugged him out the door of the small little room, through the halls of the inn, and outside to the front porch.

BREAK

Far away, back at the abandoned factory, the peace of the dark forest was disturbed by two people stepping out of the massive hole that Varrant had made when he'd trashed the Grappler. They were quite the odd couple; one of them was a very young girl and the other was a giant with arms as thick as tree trunks. The girl seemed to be taking great care not to fall while stepping over the remains of the wall, but the giant just slowly lumbered past it.

"Drat," grumbled the girl. "We take all this time getting here and someone took the dark matter already. Typical, isn't it, Sundance?"

The behemoth at her side said nothing, merely producing a round, black crystal that looked almost microscopic in his epic palm. The girl took it from him and squeezed it in her own hand, looking at it expectantly.

The little black crystal slowly began to shine a radiant, sky blue.

The girl smirked in the darkness and handed it back to the giant.

"He's still close," she said. "The thief's still close. Come on, Sundance, let's see if we can catch up with him."


	3. Chapter 3

-The following is non-sequitur opening gag that has no relation to the plot. I will likely do more of these in the future when I can't think of witty comments to prefix the chapters with.-

"Um, Master?" said Lorelei as she floated up to Varrant. She was carrying a small, square box wrapped in shiny red paper, with a bright green bow on top.

Varrant's eyes immediately darted to this strange object. "What you got there, Lorelei?"

Lorelei fidgeted a little, attempting to articulate what to say to the Craftknight. "Well, you know... Christmas is coming up and all... I felt like I should get you something."

"This is for me? Sweet! Gimme!" Varrant proclaimed, quickly snatching the present from the valkyrie's hands. She folded her arms in reply, and scowled at him as he tore away the wrapping paper.

"You know, a thank-you would be nice..."

But Varrant ignored her, focusing his attention on ripping the paper to shreds. Bits of shiny red fell to the ground all around his feet, leaving behind a rather ordinary brown box. He pulled the lid off and examined the contents, smirking at what laid within.

"Oh, awesome! It's a second piece of dark matter! I... Wait," the Craftknight cut himself off to examine the little black stone more closely. "Lorelei, isn't this the exact same piece we got from the factory?"

Lorelei seemed to be incapable of looking him in the eye. "Um, well, by my definition, no. But by another, I guess a more_ accurate_ definition... Yeah. Yeah, you could say it's the same one."

"Wow, I don't know if I should feel offended that you thought I was stupid enough to ensure you could get away with this, or disgusted at how I don't have anything cooler for you to steal and then give back to me."

"Still waiting on that thank-you, Varrant."

_Chapter 3 - The Big Hit_

As Varrant stood outside the inn the next day, one thought hovered in his head: a curse upon whoever had allowed the world to function this early in the morning. The sun was barely even up and the air was still thick with night's chill. The cold didn't bother him - his overcoat, threadbare as it was, was still rather warm - but it was the _principle _of the thing. This was just too early for his sleep-until-the-afternoon mentality to handle. It was discrimination, really.

The Abomination had quite literally dragged Varrant out of bed that morning and forced him out to the front, where he was to wait until the enigmatic Daughter of the Abomination made her appearance. Lorelei was somehow managing to keep herself afloat, albiet struggling in vain against the sandman's grip. Like Varrant, she wasn't accustomed to this foreign time of day, that the souls of the damned speak of as "morning".

"Morning". The very _word _made him feel exhausted.

"Um, excuse me?"

The soft voice from behind him managed to break Varrant out of his musings regarding the horrors of the beginning of the day. "Are you Varrant and Lorelei?"

The Daughter of the Abomination had just stepped out of the inn, and was now standing behind them! Varrant, filled with a kind of morbid curiosity as to how hideous the daughter was in relation to the father, spun around as quickly as he was able. Upon laying sight on her, the Craftknight was briefly but immediately baffled at her appearance. He surmised that she was lucky enough to get her mother's genes.

The girl was not revoltingly ugly; she was quite pretty, actually. She was a bit shorter than Varrant and was wrapped up tightly in a dark purple cloak with several large buttons on the front. Her hair was blond and long, though not to the extent of, say, Lorelei's. She had a very wide-brimmed hat with a red feather in it, and a rather awkward look was on her face, probably because she was not accustomed to meeting new people.

"Yeah, that's us," said Varrant, rather relieved that he would not be in the company of some hulking monstrosity on his journey. "You're the Summoner?"

The Daughter of the Abomination Who Thankfully Looked Nothing Like Him nodded in reply, took off her hat, and did a flashy sort of bow. "Cerize Skyfeld, summoner-in-training, at your service!" she proclaimed, straightening her hat again. "Well, let's get going, huh? No time like the present, and all that stuff..."

Varrant groaned in reply. "Oh, man, we have to walk all the way there? We don't even get transportation or anything?"

"Well, we can't really afford transportation," said Cerize, stepping off the porch. "Sending me to the academy pretty much took off all our extra funds. Nobody comes to inns this out of the way, you see."

Lorelei groaned, getting closer to the ground with every passing second. "Ugh, I can't keep this up," she said. "Varrant, let me ride on your back or something, so I can get some sleep."

"What? No way! I can't walk all that distance carrying you--" but his protests were largely ignored by the valkyrie, who did not even wait for him to finish the sentence before putting her arms around his neck and falling asleep on his back. Not caring about the fact that she was not aware of him doing so, Varrant went ahead with his decision to give her a dirty look.

Having accomplished this, he shifted so that it was possible for him to both carry Lorelei and keep his sword easily accessible at the same time. "Okay," he said. "We ready to go?"

He was about to step forwards down the path, but stopped when he noticed the blue glow emanating from his coat pocket.

It was difficult arranging it so that he could reach into his pocket and keep Lorelei from hitting the ground, but Varrant somehow accomplished to produce the dark matter from within the folds of his coat. It had shifted from its normal, shining black color in favor of a vibrant sky blue glow.

"Whoa, weird," said a mystified Varrant, staring into it in the hopes of deciphering what had caused the occurrence.

"What's that you've got there?" Cerize asked, leaning in close to inspect the Craftknight's crystal.

"It's called dark matter," said Varrant. "Come on, I'll tell you about it as we go."

BREAK

Thankfully, the sun eventually rose high into the air to shine brightly through the trees that lined the path, thus signifying morning's fading and afternoon's appearance - something the Craftknight welcomed. It was very quiet here in the forest, the only sounds being the footsteps of the party, and Varrant's old antique jewelry clattering around as he walked. Lorelei snoozed happily away on her master's back, it still being a few hours before the usual time she awoke.

"Okay, I get it, I think," said Cerize. "So you need four pieces of dark matter in order to forge any weapons out of it."

Varrant nodded. "Yeah. But it's scattered around the world in all sorts of places, and we don't have any clue where to look next. This piece here was in an old factory near your inn."

"So, why was it glowing like that?" the Summoner asked. The little shard had been pulsing out its blue glow ever since they had left the inn, and showed no intention of stopping any time soon. Varrant had stuck it safely in his coat pocket, but its light was still glowing brightly through the cloth.

"Now, that I _can't_ answer," he said.

"Maybe it means another piece is close by? It could--wait a second."

Cerize stopped where she was, and Varrant walked past her for a bit before realizing that she had ceased her progress along the path. He turned around. "What's up, Cerize?"

The Summoner's eyes darted back and forth across the trail. "Varrant, I think someone's watching us."

"Watching us? What makes you think that?"

"I just thought I heard something coming from the trees a minute ago."

"I didn't hear any--"

Varrant was interrupted by the sudden impact of something hard and flat colliding with his ribs. He went hurtling past Cerize and into a rather inconveniently placed tree, feeling something - either his bones or the wood, he wasn't quite sure - crack in response. Lorelei had gone flying off his back from the hit, and so was unable to protect her master from the impact. She hit the dirt and lay still.

Varrant staggered upwards, propping himself up with his sword. His vision was blurry and seemed to be fond of swaying around, but he was still capable of spotting the huge creature that had jumped out of the forest at them.

It was almost human-shaped, except for the rather notable fact that it was nine feet tall and assembled entirely out of stone. Its arms were very nearly as long as the rest of its body, in stark contrast to its extremely stubby, short legs. The creature's body was a big hourglass-shaped piece of rock with a stoic face carved into its center. Its eyes were glowing red and the creature as a whole seemed to be quite old - moss was growing all over its rocky body.

As it stepped forward, Varrant's eyes shifted from the monster to the person sitting atop it: a girl, no older than twelve, rode upon the creature's head. She looked more suited to a ballroom than a forest path in the middle of nowhere, Varrant thought as he observed her fancy, perfectly clean white dress that probably cost at least a million boam.

"Who're you?" demanded Cerize, as one usually does when confronted with this scenario.

"Oops," the girl in the white dress said, blushing a little. "I'm sorry, I was hoping that would have knocked your friend out, but it seems like he's still awake."

"Gonna take more than one smack to keep me down!" said Varrant, taking a stance with his sword. "Come on, Lorelei, let's--"

Varrant was cut off again, but he intentionally did so himself when his vision traveled to his valkyrie cohort. Lorelei appeared completely undisturbed - to the point that she was still in dreamland, as though nothing had transpired just now. She must really be tired, he thought. Like, to the point of hibernation. Lorelei rolled over in her sleep, murmuring, "Chocolate grapes? You know I'll eat them..."

Varrant was, again, unsure of who to place blame on. He decided it was the Abomination's fault, because he did not much care for the man.

"Let me introduce myself," said the girl in the white dress, finally deciding to answer Cerize's question. "I'm Cass, a Craftknight. This is my golem, Sundance. And it would really help us if you would please hand over your dark matter."


	4. Chapter 4

Updates may be more sporadic in the future, for a reason that is, like the Communist-built giant robots that live in the forest behind my house, ludicrously immense in size:

Reason: College. I don't think I have to explain how this cuts in to my writing time. For convenience's sake, I'll refer to it as "hellish". This choice of verbiage is logical, because I live in California. And California is hell.

Rest assured, though: I will soldier on and make sure to bring plenty of Dark Matter chapters to _you_, the reader.

-Mr. Sanchez

_Chapter 4 - Wherein Varrant and Friends Fight a Golem and Very Nearly Get Killed in the Process_

Varrant, his sword at the ready, had a very convincing resemblance to someone who had a plan, but this resemblance was merely a resemblance and nothing more. The buzzsaw sword was a very destructive weapon, true, but it would bear mentioning that he had quite a moral objection against taking said sword to a small girl. He could not in all good conscience fight her, so he concluded that if he subdued that monolithic Guardian Beast to Cass' side, he might have some chance of making the girl concede. This was another problem, though: Sundance the Golem was quite large and Varrant was unsure that he would be able to damage it and avoid being flattened to a substance not unlike paste. The predicament was made worse by the fact that Lorelei was lost in dreamland and thus incapable of healing her master's wounds.

It was barely even past noon, and already Varrant was having a crappy day.

Cerize took a step in front of him and fumbled around in the folds of her dark cloak for something. "Varrant, step back. I may not have a lot of training yet, but I think I can summon something powerful enough to take this golem down."

A gasp from their opposition. "You're a Summoner?" Cass looked genuinely intimidated by Cerize, and Varrant saw her shrink behind her Guardian Beast a little. She began to murmur something to herself, like, "Oh man, what am I supposed to do now?"

"Cerize, are you sure about this?" asked Varrant, raising an eyebrow in a classic display of skepticism. "I mean, the whole reason I'm with you is to take you somewhere where you learn not to screw up. I'm kinda worried you haven't learned that yet."

Cerize flicked out a small, rectangular piece of paper covered with illegible symbols, which Varrant briefly thought was some sort of napkin. "Don't worry. Just sit back and watch." With that, she held the small piece of paper into the air and intoned in a loud, clear voice:

"_Personification of filth and disgust,_

_Awaken from your damned cesspool and traverse to the world of men._

_Come forth! The summoner Cerize commands it!"_

Upon these words, a very large sphere of bluish-white light materialized in front of her, with several smaller balls of light encircling around it like moons around a planet.

Varrant was a fellow with absolutely no knowledge or experience concerning Summoners, apart from the one who had called forth Lorelei for him. And he barely even comprehended it then. Nonetheless, he assumed that whatever Cerize was calling out, it was likely to be something powerful. After all, it had words like "damned" and "cesspool" in its incantation.

The apparition of light faded away, leaving behind Cerize's monster.

Looking down at it, Varrant realized that he had spoke - or rather, thought - too soon.

It was some kind of pulsing blob of lime-green ooze, with large, beady eyes and a mouth that was remeniscent of a jack-o-lantern. This creature she had summoned was so completely unremarkable that it is impossible to describe it in any further detail, other than the fact that it was the very antithesis of what Varrant was expecting.

"What the heck is this thing?" he asked. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time, he poked it with his boot. This produced a mildly gross sucking noise. "I honestly think I've accidentally stepped in things that were more threatening than this."

Cerize blushed a little. "All... all I really know how to summon is Slimes," she confessed.

"Then... why were you so confident before?"

"It's a really _sticky_ Slime?"

Varrant instantly felt how Lorelei must have felt every time she argued with him. Thinking of her, he cast a glance over at his partner, to discover that she still had no intentions of waking up at any point in the near future.

A crappy day, and getting crappier by the minute. Cass and Sundance simply watched the scene in what Varrant guessed was a kind of bewildered pity, like the look of a prison guard who watches an inmate break free of his shackles and then run straight into the bars of his own cell.

Cerize, not to be deterred by her own failure to produce anything threatening, decided to make the best of her new companion - which was, incidentally, no stickier than any other Slime. "Go!" she shouted at it, pointing (rather over-dramatically, Varrant thought) at Sundance the Golem. "Wreak havoc!"

The Slime pathetically inched its way towards Cass' towering abomination, which happened to have an eight-and-a-half-foot height advantage and outweighed it by a rough estimate of over four hundred pounds. With these factors in mind, it was not at all surprising to see Sundance crush it in one hand and then toss the splattering remains into a tree.

There was a moment's pause.

"Well, I tried," said Cerize.

Cass said, "Okay, I admit that was funny. But it's not gonna stop me from siccing Sundance on you if you don't give up the dark matter."

"Any more bright ideas?" Varrant asked.

"One, actually," said Cerize. "I was thinking it would be in our best interest if I ran and hid behind that tree over there and let _you _fight the golem."

"Oh, well that sounds--_wait a minute!_" The Craftknight's words came a tad too late, for Cerize had already darted behind a nearby tree. She poked her head out from behind the trunk, and gave him a thumbs-up.

"Go get 'em, Varrant!" she called. "I believe in you!"

If this day got any crappier, Varrant thought the sky would turn brown.

"I don't need to go after your friends," said Cass, stepping out from her safe spot behind Sundance. "You're the one carrying the dark matter, right? I just need to beat you and take it."

"How do you know I have any in the first place?"

Cass produced her own piece of dark matter from a small leather pouch she wore on her belt. It was, much like Varrant's, glowing a bright shade of blue. "Because dark matter glows when pieces are close together," she said. "That's how I was able to track you down."

"Well, then you just made a huge mistake," bluffed Varrant. "'Cause if I beat you, then that means I get a second piece. Then I'm halfway there."

Cass looked miffed. She turned to the giant by her side, pointed at Varrant, and demanded, "Sundance, he's not gonna hand it over! Sic 'em!"

The huge monster raised its arms in reply. Varrant switched on the teeth of his buzzsaw sword and tightened his grip on the handle. The golem immeidately grabbed him and threw him straight up into the air, something that took Varrant about 3.2 seconds to realize.

Realizing that he was quite a ways overhead, Varrant reversed his momentum and came flying down at Sundance, slashing its stony hand when it tried to grasp him again. The buzzsaw teeth scraped noisily against the golem's skin

- It was at this point that Lorelei was heard to mutter something that sounded like "Varrant, turn that off. I'm trying to juggle." -

and Varrant swiftly executed a three-slash combo across the monster's body, forcing it to stagger back a bit.

Cerize cheered from her sanctuary behind the tree. "Nice one, Varrant! Hit him again! I believe in you! _I believe!"_

"Would you _shut u--_" said Varrant before Sundance slammed an open palm right into his ribs. In the back of his mind, he managed to register that the golem had followed this up with three punches to his face, but he felt none of them. Sundance finished this combo up with a body blow that sent Varrant flying across the path. He landed on his head and then fell flat on his face, his buzzsaw sword sticking into the ground just inches from his head.

Now, Varrant had landed relatively close to Lorelei, which was fortunate for him. This was because the buzzsaw sword was an extremely loud weapon and Lorelei, sound sleeper though she was, could not last through the roar of a motorized chainsaw blade so close to her ears. She muttered something incoherent and announced that she was up, slowly floating until she was a few inches off the ground.

At this point in the battle, Varrant lost consciousness and thus was unable to experience what happened next. Lorelei would later retell the events to him, and according to her, this is what transpired. It is important to note that Cerize, when asked for confirmation, pointed out that a few elements of the story were either embellishments or outright lies. Regardless, this is Lorelei's account.

Upon waking up to the sounds of battle, Lorelei looked around to see a beaten Varrant lying face-down in the dirt, and on the other side stood an immense golem that seemed to have something red dripping from its knuckles. A young girl in a white dress was cheering the monstrosity on and completely unaware of Lorelei's awakening. The valkyrie also spotted Cerize, watching quietly from behind a tree.

Lorelei immediately put two and two together and surmised that the girl and her golem had attacked Varrant out of nowhere. Further, with him out of commision, it was up to her to drive the attackers back.

Having reached this conclusion, Lorelei immediately did a series of backflips through the air and "rapid-kicked" Sundance "ten times in like half a second". Sundance, after taking this bit of punishment, immediately toppled over on its back and flailed to get up like an overturned tortoise.

This was the first logistical improbability - Lorelei was not any stronger than your average teenaged girl, valkyrie or no. This, coupled with Sundance's tremendous weight advantage, made it highly unlikely that Lorelei could have knocked her opponent down. Varrant, however, had not realized this until long after when the story was told to him, and thus could not find an opportune spot to bring it up without illiciting strange looks from everyone else present.

Regardless of whether or not Sundance whethered the blows, it quickly went into what Lorelei swore up and down was the "Stance of the Five Gods" in "some old martial art or something, I dunno", although when pressed for details she admitted that Sundance may have just been cracking its knuckles.

Sundance then threw a "slow-mo karate punch", which Lorelei immediately responded to by bending over backwards and allowing the attack to fly right over her by what could not have been more than an inch. This punch struck a nearby tree and caused it to "totally freakin' explode", although this may have been an embellishment as Cerize claimed that there were no trees in the range of the punch. In fact, according to Cerize, Lorelei did not dodge the punch at all.

Whatever the case, the golem continued its assault by unleashing a series of what Lorelei referred to as "machine-gun punches", "a few" of which managed to strike her. While she conceded that the punches were extremely painful, she insisted that she was in fact "so tough that all I got was a paper cut". Varrant suspected she had just taken the blows and then cast a healing spell on herself, but did not feel like saying this to her.

Lorelei smacked against another tree and gripped to the trunk with the backs of her fingers. Sundance charged and attempted to flatten her against the trunk, but she responded by pressing her feet against the palms of her enemy's hands, thus holding it off.

Now, the valkyrie admitted that she was fighting a losing battle at this point. Sundance had a huge height and weight advantage on her and would probably wind up flattening her into paste.

It was right around here that she proceeded to "have a tear-jerking emotional flashback".

It was this tear-jerking emotional flashback that allowed her to remember what she was fighting for that day, and so Lorelei got "really super-pissed" and struck Sundance with a kick so hard that it allegedly launched the golem into the sun. Varrant knew for a fact that this was a lie, as he had recovered from his injuries by now and bore witness Lorelei merely manage to shove Sundance a few feet away from her.

"Come on, Sundance, you can take her!" shouted Cass. Her Guardian Beast responded by gripping Lorelei around the throat and pinning her to the ground. It raised its other fist, the implication clear that it was prepared to ruin the valkyrie's pretty little face.

Varrant seized his buzzsaw sword and sprung into action.

A split second later, Sundance no longer had a right hand.

The golem's raised fist went flying off its rocky arm and crashed into the ground somewhere Varrant did not care to see. He ran up the front of Sundance's body, backflipped off of it, and sliced the golem right down its face. As he expected, the chain got stuck in its rocky skin, so Varrant flipped back on to Sundance's body and yanked it out, backflipping one last time onto the ground. It must have looked extremely cool, but all the acrobatic maneuvers had caused Varrant's head to start spinning.

He wondered distantly if pulling off such an assuredly cool move was worth the aching head and the inevitable point where he would pass out again. He decided that it was.

"About time you woke up," said Lorelei, who looked as though she had taken much more punishment than her account claimed. The amor plating on her right shoulder had cracked and broken off, and her red bodysuit was torn in places. She was bleeding from a small wound on the side of her head.

"That's my line," panted Varrant, falling to one knee.

Sundance wobbled in place, and then, accompanied by a shriek from Cass, collapsed onto its back with enough force to cause the ground to quake. Its body morphed into a sphere of blue energy not unlike the one Cerize had used to summon her Slime, and then completely faded away. A small piece of paper on Cass' belt began to gently glow.

Cass stared in shocked silence at Varrant and Lorelei, and then immediately burst into tears. "_Look what you did!_" she screamed, pointing an accusatory finger at Varrant. "_You broke Sundance! Meanie! MEANIE! I'm gonna tell my dad about this!_"

Then she turned and disappeared into the trees, her screaming fading away into the distance.

Varrant asked, "You got any more healing spells?"

"Nope," replied Lorelei, with a kind of grim smile.

Then they both passed out.

Cerize decided that now would be a good time to step out from behind the tree. She hoped to herself that when her companions woke up again they would not remember the event, thus giving her the chance to take all the credit.


End file.
